I know this is possible to do using additional libraries such as win32com or python-pptx, but I wasn wondering if anyone knew of a way to insert an image into a powerpoint slide using the standard libraries. Lots of googling has indicated that the best solution is probably win32com, but since I can guarantee that every system this script will be deployed to will have win32com, I am looking for an implemention leveraging libraries all systems with a standard python 2.7 install will have.
It is probably possible to modify a .pptx file with the standard library without much effort: these new generation of files are meant to be zip-compressed XML + external images files, and can be handled by ziplib and standard xml parsers.
Legacy .ppt files however are a binary closed format, with little documentation, and hundrededs of corner cases. It would alwasys "be possible" to change them, since they are still just bytes, but it would take considerable effort.
That said, starting with Python 3.4, the Python installer "PIP" comes default with the language install: probably the best way to go would be to script the installation of external libraries based on the built-in PIP - that way one would not have to all external library usage.
Related
Let me start off by saying my python knowledge is beginner-to-intermediate level, and I recently started using the language again after a long time.
The Goal:
This morning I came across a bunch of word documents I wanted to convert and concatenate to PDF files, with 2 .doc files creating one PDF.
seemed like a fairly trivial task, so I figured I'd try to learn how to do it in python.
concatenating PDFs wasn't too bad, I found PyPDF2 and managed to write a script that did just that.
But 7 hours later, after countless scripts with broken dependencies- I still can't find a way to automate the doc-pdf conversion.
The Problem(s):
every script I found either:
uses python-docx (my documents are word 2003 .docs)
uses unoconv bridge (which I installed along with OpenOffice, then searched around for documentation but found none- thus I have no idea how to call from a python script or the shell. I saw one example for this but it keeps throwing errors)
uses win32com or win32com.client or pywin32 or somesuch.
I ran into numerous issues with these- installed one but couldn't import it from code (as happened to the guy here), now I can't even find them with pip. searched for documentation for them (are they modules or classes? I have no idea) and found practically nothing that I could understand, beyond that they're connected to ActivePython. (which is apparantly a superset of Python with more capabilities?).
Uses comtypes, which I installed but was unable to use/import either for some reason (maybe I'm using pip wrong somehow?)
I know my question is hardly focused but honestly by now my brain is fried from information overload. any simplifications for a noob would be more than welcome.
TL;DR:
assuming no knowledge of COM stuff and little experience with any external frameworks:
what would I have to do to convert Word 2003 .doc files to .pdf files? I'm running python3.5.1 32-bit on a Windows 10 64-bit machine.
where can I learn more about accessing other software APIs from python? are there big prerequisites for this stuff like knowing how the OS works on a lower level?
Thanks!
From my experience, converting between the various office formats is best done outside of python. With the subprocess module, you can call the external command
soffice --convert-to pdf file.doc --headless
where soffice is the command that comes with LibreOffice.
I've successfully embedded Python in a multi-platform C++ project.
This required linking to a libpython, which needs to be provided for each platform I'm targeting. For OSX it was easy, I just pulled it out of some homebrew folder.
But I would like my Python scripts to use imports from the standard library (e.g. this one)
What is that going to involve?
Standard Library documentation for Python 3 says that the standard library is a mix of compiled units and .py files, so I'm expecting I will have to maybe link my project against a second library, and somehow inform the Python runtime of the location of the folder containing the standard library's .py files.
But is it really going to be this simple? Is this process documented anywhere?
Am I going to run into trouble on mobile platforms? It looks as though Kivy might be on their way towards solving this problem...
Rookie software developer here. I’m working on a Python module that harnesses some functionality from the FFmpeg framework - specifically, the ebur128 filter function. Ideally the module will stand on its own as an independent, platform agnostic tool for verifying that audio clips comply with EBU loudness standards. It’s being designed so that end users need only perform one simple, (hopefully!) painless installation procedure, which will encompass the installation of both the FFmpeg libraries and my Python wrapper/GUI.
I apologize for the rather vague question, but does anyone have general advice for creating Python module with external dependencies, or specific advice for standardizing the FFmpeg installation across platforms? Distutils seems pretty helpful – are there other guidelines or standard practices for developing a neatly packaged Python tool? I want to minimize any installation headaches for end users.
Thanks very much.
For Windows
I think it will be easy to find ffmpeg binaries that work on any system, just like for Qt or whatever GUI library you are using. You can ship these binaries with your project and things will work (you may want to distinguish 32 bit and 64 bit systems, though).
It looks like you want to create a software that is self-contained and easily installable for end-users. Inkscape is such an example -- its installer contains Python and all other dependencies, in binary form (if required). That is, for Windows, you do not need to create a real Python package (which would allow installation with pip), and you do not need to look into distutils (which supports building C extensions). Both you do not need/want, I guess.
Maybe it will be enough for you to assemble a good directory structure and to distribute a ZIP archive with your software. This is enough if you do not need to interact with the Windows registry, for instance. Such programs are usually called "standalone", in the Windows world. However, you might still want to have a real Windows installer (even if it is just a self-extracting archive). The following article covers your requirements, I believe: http://cyrille.rossant.net/create-a-standalone-windows-installer-for-your-python-application/
It suggests using http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php for creating such an installer.
Other platforms
On other operating systems it will be more difficult. For instance, I think it will be almost impossible to create ffmpeg binaries that run on every Linux system, because ffmpeg itself has so many binary dependencies. I do not know whether you can statically build ffmpeg at all.
The hindrance we have to ship python is the large size of the standard library.
Is there a minimal python distribution or an easy way to pick and choose what we want from
the standard library?
The platform is linux.
If all you want is to get the minimum subset you need (rather than build an exe which would constrain you to Windows systems), use the standard library module modulefinder to list all modules your program requires (you'll get all dependencies, direct and indirect). Then you can zip all the relevant .pyo or .pyc files (depending on whether you run Python with or without the -O flag) and just use that zipfile as your sys.path (plus a directory for all the .pyd or .so native-code dynamic libraries you may need -- those need to live directly in the filesystem to let the OS load them in as needed, can't be loaded directly from a zipfile the way Python bytecode modules can, unfortunately).
Have you looked at py2exe? It provides a way to ship Python programs without requiring a Python installation.
Like Hank Gay and Alex Martelli suggest, you can use py2exe. In addition I would suggest looking into using something like IronPython. Depending on your application, you can use libraries that are built into the .NET framework (or MONO if for Linux). This reduces your shipping size, but adds minimum requirements to your program.
Further, if you are using functions from a library, you can use from module import x instead of doing a wildcard import. This reduces your ship size as well, but maybe not by too much
Hope this helps
How to read/write a .sit archive using Python in Linux?
For dealing with older library formats I tend to fall back on command line utilities. You should be able to find sit manipulation tools such as this one:
http://ctan.binkerton.com/ctan.readme.php?filename=tools/unstuff/unsit.c
As to making them, I'd suggest using an alternative format. You probably have a specific purpose in mind, but it's a fairly outdated format and you'd be better off with ZIP or TAR.GZ.